Part Four of The Small Business Website Guide for Business Owners

This is the fourth episode from the Small Business Website Guide series. The series talks about why websites are important, how to plan for a website, whether you should hire a designer (or do it yourself) – and today we’ll be talking about what a successful website is made of. Later in the guide we’ll be going over other fun things like how to get started with online marketing.

Here is a quick overview of Part Four, which covers how to have a successful small business website design:

Defining the word “Success”
Discovering your flux capacitor (what makes Success happen)
Building your flux capacitor (preparing for Success)
Modifying your flux capacitor (improve your Success)
Ignoring anything but the flux capacitor

Now that I have been at the freelance web-design business for the last several years, I have had some experience with a variety different programs. Some of them are very expensive, others are free. Here I have tried to make it easy for you and compiled a list with links to their respective locations:

Design & Image Editing:

Adobe Photoshop – $649 or $999 for the extended version

Photoshop is the most expensive program you need- but you will want this piece of software. There are a lot of different image editing tool but this is the industry standard. Sometimes you can get a student discount, or even get your company to buy it for you.

Text/Code Editing:

Mac

TextWrangler – Free: This is a great piece of software for writing your code if you don’t want to spend any money.
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Everybody is looking for lightweight code with a maximum effect. JavaScript rollovers just don’t cut it anymore- they take too long to load, they’re kinky the first time you rollover, etc. etc. and CSS using multiple images can be kinky if you aren’t using an image pre-load. The solution? CSS image rollovers using only a single background image.

If you don’t have a solid understanding of using lists for navigation, then you may want to review that concept before tackling the single-background-image rollover.

Download the example to follow along.

The concept

You have, for instance, a navigation bar (vertical or horizontal, it doesn’t matter). Very simple. There are only four buttons but you can obviously change and edit this concept to fit your own site.

How is it done?

Well this is what the HTML in the example … Read More »